The Turning Point

In the middle of this paragraph I will reach  fourteen thousand words towards this project, before the sunsets on my fine art A-level I’ll have probably written twice that (sorry). But this is the point in the project where I make my turning point, I’ve written about four artists in detail and nine more loosely, I’ve looked and dozens of works and covered three questions, I’ve come up with several design ideas and I’ve explored numerous avenues. My design Ideas were meant as four options, I’d pick one and progress, but is that true refinement? For each of my designs I’ve found the cusp of what makes it exciting and interesting and I think it shows more refinement to take that single good element and combine it into one mantra for my final piece. I want to move away from how I normally work and I want to spend the second half of my project looking at more artists and trying out more things so that at the end of the process I have a single excellent, refined and well developed final piece.

To describe my final design theres a long story and a short story, read whichever you wish.

The Long Story

Medium

I’ve looked at several mediums and in the development process of my final piece I’ll explore more to find the best suited to my idea. But I’m not going to avoid the obvious truth that my final piece is likely to be an example of multimedia assemblage. How can it not be? It’s what I do best, all the work I’ve done up to this point has elegantly proved that although I’m not a one trick pony I do one trick better than any other.

The concept

I want to create a work about the relationship between my art and engineering, this links to the question, makes the work personal to me and links to my underlying theme. My design idea Inken Cities looks at urbanisation into nature and my work on apocalyptic artists looks at the relationship between artists and technology. So for my final design I want to explore the idea that technology and engineering is surpassing artistry. For me the whole point of art is to do something for its own sake, it doesn’t need a purpose it’s just about creating something interesting for entirely selfish needs, machinery always has a function art doesn’t. The repurposing of a book in my POW escape kit prompted the idea that I could use scrap objects, rejected technology and machinery and rebirth it as a piece of functionless art. Making my skull I used waste products to create art and this idea can take the satiristic twist I used in my POW kit to use discarded machinery and technology to create a piece of art. The satire is that I’m mocking the fact that maybe one day I’ll be replaced by a 3D printer by using other pieces of machinery to create art, I’m taking objects with a function and using them for art. By repurposing junk I’m explore the relationship between humanity and lifeless object which I looked at in my apocalyptic artist and showing not only how fleeting that relationship is but how as an artist I have a purpose because I’m making something out of discarded objects.

The Piece

The final piece itself will be a collection of scrap objects, pieces of machinery and outdated technology that come together to create something visually interesting. I want the whole work to be kinetic, I want it to move because that separates it from my previous static works. I want the work to be created from object that used to have a practical everyday function and I want to morph them into an object which only function is to be a piece of art.

The Links

This idea links to every piece of work I’ve done so far for this project, because this idea was born from the research and exploration I’ve already done. This work links to Andrew Wyeth because I accept I can’t paint like Wyeth but I can strive to create a work as meaningful and deep as his. It links to Giles walker because I’ll use scrap and found object which have been discarded by people to create a new piece of meaningful art. This idea links to Da Vinci’s sketchbooks because I will use the beauty of mechanical forms to create an aesthetically beautiful work. Most obviously it links to the work of Theo Jansen because I want to create a piece of work which moves and intrigues and I want to create something which is both engineeringly amazing and artistically, just like his strand beasts.

I have done four design Ideas and take an aspect from each and blended them into this final design. My POW escape kit influence this project because the repurposing I used in that has inspired my idea to create a final piece made of repurposed objects. My mosaic waste product skull looks at the use of discarded objects to create something beautiful and that’s what I aim to do in the final piece. Inken Cities looked and the interplay between people and urbanisation, this work will take that further and look at the relationship between artists and technology. Finally in my post EMP artist idea I explored what a bare bones artist would look like and I thought about what an artist would do if the world as we knew it ended, the world as we know it is changing every day because of technology so in this piece I can explore where the modern artisan stand in the face of modern engineering.

Of course I’ve taken this project on a merry jaunt to the bare extremes of my question ‘Relationships’ but this idea explore the relationship between my art and the engineering and creative processes which go into its production. The underlying problem with all my design ideas is they lacked a personal to me aspect which I was really passionate about but this idea lets me combine my passion for making things I had as a child and the great transition  I’ve made from wanting to invent thing to have a purpose and improve the world to want to make art which improve the world by being interesting and meaningful.

The Short Story

I’m going to create a work of assemblage made of scrap and discarded pieces of machinery and technology. This work will be kinetic and will take object which have a everyday function and give them a single function of being a piece of art. It will look at the relationship between artists and technology and explore my personal transition between making things for a function and making things for art.

The Really Short Really Refined Story

I’m going to make a big-ass sculpture which will move and mean… many things.